Truth – o – Meter : Marijuana VS Alcohol, which is worse for your brain?

Is alcohol more damaging to your brain than marijuana is?

As I was searching on the internet, searching for interests of mine… such as wine… I came across an article that explains that alcohol may be more damaging to your brain that marijuana can be. The article states that a new study found that marijuana is nowhere near as harmful as alcohol. Even though marijuana has been illegal for decades.

SO….

After reading the begging of this article, I decided to look up the long term affects for both substances before reading any further.

Affects of alcohol : long term

• Unintentional injuries such as car crash, falls, burns, drowning
• Intentional injuries such as firearm injuries, sexual assault, domestic violence
• Increased on-the-job injuries and loss of productivity
• Increased family problems, broken relationships
• Alcohol poisoning
• High blood pressure, stroke, and other heart-related diseases
• Liver disease
• Nerve damage
• Sexual problems
• Permanent damage to the brain
• Vitamin B₁ deficiency, which can lead to a disorder characterized by amnesia, apathy and disorientation
• Ulcers
• Gastritis (inflammation of stomach walls)
• Malnutrition
• Cancer of the mouth and throat

Affects of marijuana: long term

• Decline in IQ (up to 8 points if prolonged use started in adolescent age)
• Poor school performance and higher chance of dropping out
• Impaired thinking and ability to learn and perform complex tasks
• Lower life satisfaction
• Addiction (about 9% of adults and 17% of people who started smoking as teens)
• Potential development of opiate abuse
• Relationship problems, intimate partner violence
• Antisocial behavior including stealing money or lying
• Financial difficulties
• Increased welfare dependence
• Greater chances of being unemployed or not getting good jobs.

My thoughts: Both can have the possibly to lead to depression… BUT alcohol definitely seems to take the cake on physical damages.

Next:

As I read more of the Lad Bible’s article I read a quote that said…

“The next study then comes around, and they say that marijuana use is related to changes in the cerebellum or the whatever.”

I decided to google the last part of that sentence to find the original study. Which then lead to me to an article posted by Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine.

This article explained the study and also gave me a link to the research.

Inside this article it explains the long term affects of alcohol are worse, but there is no information proven yet that marijuana is actually beneficial to the brain. Even though The Washington Post wrote an article about marijuana saving lives.

…Okay so it is saving lives, but is it helping the brain???

Then:

I decided to go back to my original article, and read the next paragraph about The New Zealand Study.

“A New Zealand study surveyed more than a thousand locals and found that long-term marijuana use has no long-term effects on your heath, adding that the only negative outcome is on your teeth. It claimed these weed lovers actually had better cholesterol levels and a smaller waist size.”

But referring back to my compare and contrast (earlier in my post) about the long term affects of both alcohol and marijuana, there seems to be mental health effects.

The Lad Bible’s article also said this:

“But then another research group looked at what happens if you smoke the ganja every week as a teen and they found it’s definitely not the best.”

The research group was The University of Maryland School of Medicine, this article spoke about smoking marijuana everyday could lead to developing conditions such as attention deficit disorder (ADD) and schizophrenia, and suffer permanent reductions in intelligence.

I then clicked on the study that was done by the Neuropsychopharmacology, and in the abstract they claimed that…

“Regular marijuana use during adolescence, but not adulthood, may permanently impair cognition and increase the risk for psychiatric diseases, such as schizophrenia. Cortical oscillations are integral for cognitive processes and are abnormal in patients with schizophrenia.”

One result of the study was also:

“Long-term cognitive impairments and elevated risk of psychiatric disorders in regular marijuana users are less pronounced when use is initiated in adulthood, instead of in adolescence.”

Back to the original article from the Lad Bible:

The article talks about the grey matter containing your mind’s cell bodies and synapses. It also talks about white matter, which is made of axons which connect grey matter to each other.  Booze affects your brain’s grey and white matter, whereas marijuana doesn’t, even after years of use.

I then decided to type in grey matter and marijuana in google, and I found this article from The National Institute on Drug Abuse, that stated :

Studies have consistently shown that marijuana changes brain function, studies have not agreed whether the drug alters brain structure. The solution that The National Institute on Drug Abuse came up with was to keep checking in on the individuals they tested at different time points. They will check to see how their brains change over time in comparison to themselves and not as a control group.

Then I looked up white matter and marijuana in google, and I found this study from the United States National Library of Medicine.

The study stated this:

 “a growing body of research suggests that an adolescent onset of heavy marijuana use can have neurotoxic effects on developing white matter”

Finally:

I just decided to google, “is marijuana bad for the brain”, and google took me to this website on the National Institute of Drug Abuse. This drug fact website just gave me information about the drug marijuana. It said it acts on the brain by THC acting on specific brain cell receptors. This will react to natural THC-like chemicals. These natural chemicals play a role in normal brain development and function.